Generally there are always a few things that get left off for some reason or other, although the criteria for inclusion vary from project to project.

We sometimes feel like hamsters on a wheel, covering the same musical ground we did 20 or more years ago.

When you've been at it for as long as we have, you go through fallow periods and blooming ones, and you know when you're on a roll and you learn how to keep it rolling for as long as you can.

We've gotten better at shooting down routine material or stuff we feel like we've done better in the past. Getting different people in the band for periods also keeps it from going stale.

It feels like we've grown enough as musicians over the last few years to go new places, and our conceptual and compositional abilities have developed along with it, so we're pushing all the envelopes we can at the same time and it still feels like cutting edge work to us. It seems to resonate with people.

A lot of ideas get re-used and made part of new songs if the first version didn't cut the mustard, and the stuff that gets left off usually contained the germ of something good but failed to reach a satisfactory state by the recording stage.

I think this insatiable need to get to know new music is a big part of why it has lasted so long.